Absolute worst (and I guess best) Kongregate badges
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My only problem is with badges that can’t be obtained anymore. The rest is up to you, player, if you gonna grind for it or not.
Fall on this category dead MMOs, which require PvP battles, but there are no players.
Also, the badge from Sola Rola: Gravity Maze, the game doesnt work anymore and was even picked as BOTD. It should be removed ASAP.

Bad Badges:
Badges for bugged games or games with dead communities.
Badges that require extreme grinding.
Badges requiring PVP.
Badges for games you have to use action points and can’t earn just by working hard for a long time.
Badges with wrong difficulty tags (E.g, hard badges that would be better as medium badges)
Badges for bad games.

Personaly, I do not have badges that I dislike. But please, do not remove the impossible badges. They are challenging and I enjoyed some of them (Run2, Pandemic2). Also, some of the impossible badges do not take that long… It may be all about luck.. Like in Pandemic2 or Streamline.

PvP badges, especially those involving winning x times, are the worst ones because:
1. The community will be dead eventually, no matter how popular it is at first.
2. It says nothing about your playing skills, you can run into noobs and win easily, or get beaten by high-levels despite being quite good.
3. It encourages rigged matches, which annoys those who genuinely like to play the game.

To most people, these are PvP badges. These shouldn’t exist for a number of reasons:

1. If you aren’t there for when the badges are initially released and the number of people playing the game is quite high, you won’t get the badge. The badges just aren’t future proof. There are plenty of games that now have badges that through no fault of the player, they are unable to obtain. This is frustrating.
2. There are two variables in PvP: The other player and you. There is essentially no control other the other player, so whether or not you beat them is not entirely up to the player. When the player is not fully in control of whether or not they are able to achieve the badge, that’s frustrating.
3. Dodgy mechanics are rife in PvP. If you can’t beat the opponent with skill because they’re really lucky or they chose a different class so they automatically destroy you or anything where there is not a fair chance for both players, that’s frustrating.

Grinders:

There’s been quite a recent trend of MMO grind badges. If you’re getting paid to do these then fine, but at least don’t make them grinder badges:

1. Most people have already decided whether they intend on playing (and paying for) the game by the time they are about quarter of an hour into the game. If you’re forcing us to play more time (often each day due to energy systems), we won’t like it. This is the root of why these games can get so many mixed reviews. They might be great games but you’ve driven badgehunters to rate it 1 out of 5 because they didn’t like it but had to play it for the badge. This is frustrating.

2. Most in-game features are already heavily promoted within the game. It is unlikely that getting us to play another ten or twenty levels past the point we stopped having fun will change our opinion. This is frustrating.

3. Don’t re-badge old MMOs. If we’e already got all the badges, we consider the game ‘finished’, even if we haven’t done everything. Don’t force us to re-live games we obviously didn’t enjoy enoug to keep playing past the point of getting all the badges. This is frustrating.

4. To a certain extent, this also applies to games in which you just do the same thing repeatedly. Like the Papa series. I loved playing it the first time, less the next few times. The mechanics of the game do not change much when progressing through the game, unlike stuff like Tower Defence games where you actually have to start planning ahead or platformers where you might suddenly get a reverse-gravity skill that suddenly changes level designs.

PvP badges, especially those involving winning x times, are the worst ones because:
1. The community will be dead eventually, no matter how popular it is at first.
2. It says nothing about your playing skills, you can run into noobs and win easily, or get beaten by high-levels despite being quite good.
3. It encourages rigged matches, which annoys those who genuinely like to play the game.

The worst badges are those like the Kongai hard badge, where not only do you have to win a lot, but losing actually decreases your points and takes you farther away from getting the badge. I haven’t been in Kongai for a long time, but if it’s as dead as the other PvP games that came out around that time (hi, Dinowaurz!), the badge is not even possible anymore without mass collusion or alt abuse. That should not have happened.

I understand why multiplayer games get badges. They have high ratings, they earn revenue for the site, and some of them are actually pretty great games. However, I think there needs to be a hard rule for badges on these games.

Any badge that absolutely cannot be earned without involvement from other players is a bad idea.

Starfighter: Disputed Galaxy (when it was still functional) was a multiplayer game, but you could get all the badges without involving yourself in multiplayer at all. The Remnants of Skystone badges can be obtained by yourself, although it is slow and painful. That 100,000,000 raid damage badge on Dawn of the Dragons can be obtained by yourself, although it is even slower and much more painful. But the point is, a few years from now, when the player base is all but gone except for a few hardcore devotees, the badge can still be obtained. This isn’t the case for Kongai, or Dinowaurz, or Swords & Potions, where you’re relying on an active community for the badges to function as designed.

Personaly, I do not have badges that I dislike. But please, do not remove the impossible badges. They are challenging and I enjoyed some of them (Run2, Pandemic2). Also, some of the impossible badges do not take that long… It may be all about luck.. Like in Pandemic2 or Streamline.

I agree with the note to keep imp. badges, i hope they don’t remove them also because it took me a long time just to earn one.

I’ve been putting off replying to this topic, in case I got any more ideas, but I probably wouldn’t come back and reply unless I do it now, so… here goes =P (

First off, I just want to say that I basically have every badge (except for 7 =/ ) on kongregate. This isn’t to brag, but just to say that I have tried every badge. Also, I <3 badge hunting. The worst badges, and the problems they exemplify, are…

1. Sacred Seasons 2 – The 2nd hard badge or the “endurance” badge
Now, a lot of people hate MMOs. Some people like them. That isn’t the problem with this badge. The problem is very much how Sacred Seasons 2 works as a community/game. This game and the core community are highly dependent on helping eachother out and leveling eachother. A lot of the main quests could probably be started and done as a team of people who begin the game together, that’s not the issue. The issue is those giant level gaps between dungeons where, if you just have a team of people about the same level playing through the game together, you’d have to grind for hours everyday for weeks to be able to handle the next area and months until you finish the game. This is really demonstrated in the first Sacred Seasons, where all the quest and areas you find only get you up to about level 30, and the final area requires you to be of level 100 to reasonably survive in battles and contribute at all. This means that you have to clear the final dungeon literally thousands of times (If I recall correctly, it was over 2000 times needed) to reach that level.

The problem: This means that with help from friends around your level, you once again have multi-month long grinding sessions (again for hours per day) to make progress. OR, you can find a high level friend who has been with the game for years to basically carry you through the final quests. This leads to almost everyone playing the game for badges to be constantly begging and harassing what few high levels there are around to carry them through the game. Naturally, the community outright ignores the majority of them, and who can blame them? It takes a non-trivial amount of patience and time to run someone through the quests needed for the badge, so they have to be very select in who they help. If you’re very popular, have a really good friend who is a high level person, or you’re a mod, you can usually find someone to help you eventually without too much trouble. Everyone else is just shit out of luck.

Summary: This badge encourages harassing/begging other players to carry you through and earn it for you, and is impossible to earn on your own merits for those who cannot or will not do so. It annoys the existing player-base of the game and literally requires 6-8 hours daily for months to be able to earn it without high level help.

The 2nd worst badge (that exemplifies the category) would be Berserk: The Cataclysm. I realize that this makes it the 2nd MMO of the worst badges I’m listing, but I’m not trying to speak out against MMOs. I fully realize that there are fans of the genre, and there are enough people complaining about the category that I don’t need to mention anything about them.

The badge in question is the medium badge for this game, where you need to win 3 battles with 3 squads. The reason this is a problem is because in is very difficult to figure out how to get this badge. I don’t mean difficult to figure out as in “This boss is difficult to figure out.” The goal of a badge like that is clear, kill the boss, the challenge comes from determining how to kill that boss and managing to do so. The reason winning 3 battles with 3 squads is so difficult is because as a player there is absolutely no clue how this is done. The majority of the battles you’ll come across in the game are 1squad or 2 squad, and 3 squad battles are almost impossible to find. Logically, you think the answer would just to make progress in the singleplayer campaign, but as it turns out there is only a single 3 squad battle in the ENTIRECAMPAIGN. If someone puts in the effort to complete this, they still have no idea how to get those last 2 squad battles. Now, I believe you can use premium currency to redo stages in the campaign, and while you get enough premium currency to do this… it’s easy to have spent some previously and without knowing you need the premium currency for this because there’s only one instance in the campaign is really unfair to ask of a player. This leaves the player annoyed and frustrated, because they have no idea where to look or how to find what is required for the badge. There is absolutely NO indication anywhere of how to even attempt this. (It turns out that the way to earn this badge is to visit a friend who is inactive in the game and fight the barbarians who have moved into his land. And even then, the chance of encountering a rare 3-squad battle is very low so you will have to spend quite some time fighting these battles. So even if you tried looking for a 3 squad battle here on a whim, chances are you would have dismissed it because there didn’t seem to be any appearing.)

Summary: This is a poor badge because the player has no idea what the requirement of the badge is even asking, or where to begin attempting this. Not knowing how to complete a challenge is perfectly okay, but a player shouldn’t be frustrated trying to figure out HOW to attempt a challenge.

Choosing a type of badge for the third worst badges was tough, as was choosing a specific example. I just want to say that the badges I am showing as bad badge examples does not mean they are bad games. A game being bad is highly subjective, and since only games with higher ratings are being chosen means that there are a lot of people who like them and can’t really claim to be objectively bad.

The game and badge I’m going to go with for third worst type of badge is for Bloons Tower Defense 4, the hard badge. This game can be pretty challenging and fun, although some may not agree. The reason I’m choosing this badge is because this game is punishingly hard when attempting this badge. Now, I’m level 65 and an extremely avid gamer, I would never speak out against badge difficulty. The problem with this badge is….
That you can pay kreds to basically circumvent it. For someone not willing to pay kreds, it’s is frustratingly difficult to get this badge compared to all of the other hard badges on this site. It would definitely be one of the most challenging ones. But there is a HUGE gap in difficulty if you choose to spend even a small amount of kreds… instead of almost being worth of an impossible and being punishingly difficult, this game simply becomes challenging. Not only that, you have to know in advanced WHICH of the premium things you need to buy with kreds.

I’m not speaking out against premium content, or even premium content giving an advantage. Premium content, while hated by a lot of people, is a perfectly viable business model and way to donate to a developer whom you appreciate in order for extra goodies and bonuses for a game you enjoy. But having a badge almost directly purchasable by kreds? It makes the developer come off very greedy and kong come off very greedy. Now, I love kong, and I love you guys (<3 for greg is mojo, the admins, and everyone else involved with kong including the community and developers) and I really believe that these badges aren’t designed to manipulate people into paying kreds, but that’s the way it comes off to the players. A game is very difficult, we feel forced to pay out of frustration, and we feel guilty of doing so, annoyed at the developers, and angry at kong for badging in such a way. (Note: I enjoyed this game and played through without donating any kreds, then donated some to see how it would affect the challenge of it.)

Summary: Please don’t have badges for games where you can just “buy” the badge. It seems greedy by those of us who are willing to pay/donate, and it angers and frustrates those who are unable to buy/donate for whatever reason.

The fourth worst type of badge… I feel a little guilty choosing this game because I love the developer and love the game, but it really exemplifies a few problems with badges. In his defense, I don’t believe he even sponsored this badge and it hurt his ratings more than most games that get badged.

The impossible badge for Pyro is an example of several bad qualities in a badge. The first is that….

This badge is impossible to earn for some operating systems/computers. For those of you that are not aware of the requirements of this badge or the game, it involves slinging a fireball into some torches, and once all the torches are lit you beat the level. You can beat a level perfectly by igniting all the torches in one shot, and this is called “acing” a level. For the impossible badge you have to ace every level in a certain time limit. All in all, sounds pretty typical and a good choice for an impossible badge.

Here’s the first problem… one of the “perfect” shots requires you to do so on a level that was never intended to get a perfect shot. However, someone figure out that you could do this by aiming the fireball at an area above and to the left of the game window. The problem is, not all computers or operating systems would allow you to do this. I recall at the time that the current OS for macs wouldn’t receive any input if the cursor was outside the game window and thus you could never beat this level perfectly. It’s really frustrating for badge requirements/difficulty to be affected by the type of computer/operating system you use (as you can’t really change this) but especially frustrating when you simply CANNOT earn the badge with your operating system. Of course, there is absolutely no indication that you can’t if you were on a mac (and some other operating systems that I don’t presently recall) and so could spend hours obsessing over a level that was impossible to complete. (Another game that had this issue was either “Take Something Literally” or “Take Something Literally 2” in which a badge’s requirements were impossible on either a Mac or PC. Kong changed the badge offered and fixed the problem hours within the game got badged, so kudos to them =D )

The second problem was also something that a player had little to no control over. There was one level that was pivotal in determining whether or not you made all the levels under the time limit. In this level, you basically had to do absolutely nothing while the fireball slowly ignited the whole screen and completing the level. The problem is with how the timer was programmed (and in the developer’s defense, the timer was never intended to be used in such a way) was based off of the framerate, processer speed, and general lag on your computer. The end effect was that this one level could take somewhere between about 5 (or 12, it’s been awhile) seconds or 40 seconds, which was is about a whopping 30% of your total available time for only 2% of the levels. Some of the top of the chart high scores COULD still earn the badge with this handicap… but it’s pretty unrealistic even for an impossible.

The third is really less of an issue, and I can understand why it’s not always an option. If the developer was consulted, they would have either been able to make a few adjustments to how the timer/levels were to adjust for difference in operating systems and computer speed or would have chosen different badge criteria. I think all developers should be contacted before a game is badged and be told what the suggested badges were and have a chance to replace them with some of their own or agree/validate with them. Give them some sort of timeline during which to respond, and there you go. I know some developers will actively ask for certain types of badges, but I’m sure many more just assume their game won’t get badge and are caught by surprise when it does. Which I’m sure is super exciting, but… frustration between players and developers could be mitigated to a degree.

Summary: Developers should be checked with before badges are chosen/offered. Also, badges shouldn’t be highly dependent on the operating system or what type of computer a user has. Finally, a badge shouldn’t require you to lag your computer a high amount or change your operating speed.

Less time making quintuple sextuple posts, more time practicing DvM2 (easy imp), Tarnation (the hard really is easier than the imp, unless you relied on a walkthrough), Meatboy Map Pack (moderate imp) and Hexiom (luck-based imp unless you relied on a walkthrough for the normal levels) would be a better use of your time.

This badge encourages harassing/begging other players to carry you through and earn it for you, and is impossible to earn on your own merits for those who cannot or will not do so. It annoys the existing playerbase of the game and literally requires 6-8 hours daily for months to be able to earn it without high level help.

I’ll just go off on a tangent and say that when the badges came out, two friends and I who hadn’t played before were able to play together and go from start to finish in under 2 weeks, the only high-level help (if you could call it that) was on the last battle, where we had another couple people join us to even it out a bit (I’m sure we could have done it ourselves, or at least would have spent maybe 2 more days leveling to do so). I could hardly call this a multi-month game, and in actuality have yet to find any multiplayer game that took more than two or three weeks to go through in entirety.

I could hardly call this a multi-month game, and in actuality have yet to find any multiplayer game that took more than two or three weeks to go through in entirety.

But if you played the game as a solo, it would take more than three weeks to beat. However, the problem with the game’s badges is how easy it is to exploit the game. You can either take multiple months to grind up enough gears and levels to beat it by yourself, or you could beat the game in a single afternoon with a high level player. In that case, it turned the badge from an endurance hard badge to a tedious but doable medium badge.

I didn’t see this being talked about: Ninja Warz. This is absolutely terrible badge design, because one can literally ‘buy’ the badge. This badge is for reaching level 15, in a game where you can spend a little bit of cash to get an instant level up. I wouldn’t be surprised if the dev made a bit of extra money because of that poorly designed badge. Though the developer could be to blame for even including this feature, I’m sorry, but the blame will have to be moved over since the bad badge highlights the bad game design.

I didn’t see this being talked about: Ninja Warz. This is absolutely terrible badge design, because one can literally ‘buy’ the badge. This badge is for reaching level 15, in a game where you can spend a little bit of cash to get an instant level up. I wouldn’t be surprised if the dev made a bit of extra money because of that poorly designed badge. Though the developer could be to blame for even including this feature, I’m sorry, but the blame will have to be moved over since the bad badge highlights the bad game design.

Yeah, I agree. I talked more about it in my third post, except used Bloons TD 4 as an example. Ninja Warz is another good example of this.

I’ll just go off on a tangent and say that when the badges came out, two friends and I who hadn’t played before were able to play together and go from start to finish in under 2 weeks, the only high-level help (if you could call it that) was on the last battle, where we had another couple people join us to even it out a bit (I’m sure we could have done it ourselves, or at least would have spent maybe 2 more days leveling to do so). I could hardly call this a multi-month game, and in actuality have yet to find any multiplayer game that took more than two or three weeks to go through in entirety.

Yes, I acknowledge that you accomplished this multiplayer badge, and others, faster than most people did. Without discrediting your accomplishments, it sounds like you have good timing with these badges. The best time go after multiplayer badges is right after they are released. That’s usually when other people are attempting the badge, actively discussing it in chat, and the time when the badge requirements are usually most reasonable (since the badges are really for the state of the game at the time of badging.) The dynamic of a specific multiplayer game can drastically change the nature of the achievement over time.

To bring this back on topic, we can clearly see this vocalized by many throughout this thread, upset at the difficulty of trying to earn multiplayer badges in a much less active or changed community. In kong’s defense though, they really can’t and shouldn’t plan badges based off of how a game is going to be like years in the future or once the community dies out. It does seem like this bothers a lot of people though, trying to earn multiplayer/pvp badges in a dead game, but I can’t really think of a good solution for it.

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